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Show HN: A histogram of salaries given to H1B workers in the software industry

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Re: Show HN: A histogram of salaries given to H1B workers in the software industry

#211

Post by thaumasiotes »

IndianAstronaut wrote: post #186
ForHackernews wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's very very very hard to find good people. Any time somebody says this, I always mentally add "...at the wage I want to pay." It is not hard to find good people if you offered a million dollar salary. If there were a legitimate labor shortage, wages would be skyrocketing. Instead, we get employers whining and agitating for increasing the H1B quota.

Smaller companies just can't afford it. Also, a developer will keep other people employed at the company. If our company had no developers, all the sales/accountexecs/marketing/etc people would be out of a job.

If your company had no salespeople, would the developers still have a job?

Re: Show HN: A histogram of salaries given to H1B workers in the software industry

#212

Post by aceperry »

balls187 wrote: post #207
aceperry wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, is there a larger pool of good engineers in India than available locally? If there is, that sounds like an opportunity to fulfill the promise of the H1B program. From what I understand, the body shops that import most of the H1B workers don't source the high quality employees that employers are demanding here.

> From what I understand, the body shops that import most of the H1B workers don't source the high quality employees that employers are demanding here. Have data to back up that statement?

Just my friends who are engineering managers. They manage teams here and overseas in China and India. Their views are, overall, the engineers from overseas are of lower quality than the engineers here. But they cost less especially overseas, they can hire 2-3 times as many engineers as over here.

Re: Show HN: A histogram of salaries given to H1B workers in the software industry

#213

Post by swatow »

grecy wrote: post #137
stygiansonic wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you're getting downvoted, other than maybe because the original topic is US-centric. In many countries (not sure about the US), it is illegal to call yourself an engineer, regardless of what discipline it is. In Canada, various provincial bodies (PEO in Ontario) regulate the use of the title "engineer", including derivatives of it such as "software engineer". [0] Some of this might seem heavy-handed (see…

> To call oneself an engineer without having had the common/basic education in various topics like calculus, linear algebra or statistics is at best misleading, since an accredited engineering program would have provided exposure to such topics. That was my point entirely. I did study all of those things, my degree was under the faculty of Engineering, and the engineers institute of Australia agreed that I do meet th…

But why would a person need formal accreditation of they felt that they did possess the required background (assuming it was legal, which it is in Australia and the US). You are trying to impose the standards of the people who granted you that degree, on everyone else. But it's not justified. To an employer, your accreditation counts for almost nothing when comparing otherwise similar degrees (e.g. a CS degree). And you don't need to take a course in ethics to understand ethical issues or act ethically.

Re: Show HN: A histogram of salaries given to H1B workers in the software industry

#214

Post by swatow »

tjl wrote: post #139
ryanSrich wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only if you're a certified Engineer Not really. If you've got a CS or SE degree you are certainly an engineer. If you've built systems and worked in the industry solving difficult problems you are an engineer. In the US we don't need an expensive piece of paper telling us what we're qualified to call ourselves. EDIT: To be clear I'm referring to software engineering. Not all engineering. I thought that was obvious…

Did you have to take a course on ethics? What about software and society? In Canada, in order to get accreditation as an engineering program (including software engineering) there's a set of requirements to be taught. One is a course on technology's impact on society. Also, in Ontario in order to get professionally licensed as an engineer (which is required before you can call yourself an engineer, legally) one has t…

Can you give an example of an ethical problem that might be faced by a software engineer, that is covered by these courses, and that these courses would enable a person to deal with significantly better.

Re: Show HN: A histogram of salaries given to H1B workers in the software industry

#215

Post by Spooky23 »

_delirium wrote: post #104
negrit wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The facts 6 of the top 10 H1Bs sponsor are: - Indian companies - Using cheap labor - Paying significantly less then other companies. - Responsible for almost 50% of all H1B applications Driving the salaries by immigration is an historical complaint worldwide. HackerNews or not.

If the goal really is to enable highly qualified people to come to the U.S. (separate from the usual immigration process) wouldn't a fairly simple tweak just be to take the wage into account in the allocation? There's currently a fixed quota, with two things that go into allocating it: 1) offers not paying the "prevailing wage" are disqualified; and 2) the remaining offers are allocated in first-come, first-serve fas…

If that were the goal, the tweak would be simple -- give out more green cards to people with appropriate education. Let them come here and get jobs.

These programs suppress wages for low-end computer positions. If you were around in the 90s at a big company/government, you'd run into old guys who made big bucks tweaking COBOL and Operator types tweaking Batch jobs. The whole point of COBOL was that you could teach the average bean counter to write it, so the answer to the problem of these guys retiring was to import cheap workers and automate.

My grandparents all came to the U.S. from Ireland. No H-1 nonsense where you get tied to an employer, just plain immigration and a path to citizenship. It should be no different today.

Re: Show HN: A histogram of salaries given to H1B workers in the software industry

#216

Post by useonetimeacct »

shas3 wrote: post #61
djb_hackernews wrote: post #12

This gets to the rub of prevailing wage. You are hiring a developer, do you call her an engineer where the prevailing wage is 87k or do you call her a programmer where the prevailing wage is 61k? This type of fraud is difficult to prove and there probably isn't even anyone responsible in the government to verify or investigate issues. EDIT: forgot to mention that the prevailing wage can be determined by salary survey…

Why is there an implicit assumption that the H1B visa program engenders fraud? A lot of H1B discussions on HN focus on fraud and avoid talking about legitimate talented foreigners because that stuff is not as interesting. H1B discussions on HN are like the crime beat in newspapers. Further, 'H1B' seems like a catchall term for hating on immigrant labor in the software industry. Here are some examples on HN that demon…

> Why is there an implicit assumption that the H1B visa program engenders fraud

I can offer this from personal observations: - I work with many clearly talented foreigners such as Indians here on H1B

- But I've also seen entire floors of companies such as at Cisco and Ebay that are almost 100% Indian

- This appears to happen when management positions are attained by Indians who only hire more Indians and contract with Indian-based outsourcing companies

- The Indians in these companies are different than Indians who work at other companies that are not dominated by Indians, in that they tend to be of much more dubious ability. This leads me to believe that there is widespread fraud on the visa applications.

- I've heard of under the table dealings among the same people where positions at companies are sold for thousands of dollars.

All this leads me to be against the work visa program for spouses of H1B workers. I can easily imagine wives of Indians without skills creating fake resumes, and paying under the table to gain positions in Indian dominated departments. Almost guarantee this will be a widespread problem.

Re: Show HN: A histogram of salaries given to H1B workers in the software industry

#217

Post by nileshtrivedi »

klipt wrote: post #178
ForHackernews wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's very very very hard to find good people. Any time somebody says this, I always mentally add "...at the wage I want to pay." It is not hard to find good people if you offered a million dollar salary. If there were a legitimate labor shortage, wages would be skyrocketing. Instead, we get employers whining and agitating for increasing the H1B quota.

Of course, a company can only reasonably offer a million dollar salary if that hire will increase their revenue by over a million. I'm guessing that's a pretty rare hire.

> increase their revenue

OR decrease their expenses.

Re: Show HN: A histogram of salaries given to H1B workers in the software industry

#218

Post by ktran03 »

swatow wrote: post #214
tjl wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you have to take a course on ethics? What about software and society? In Canada, in order to get accreditation as an engineering program (including software engineering) there's a set of requirements to be taught. One is a course on technology's impact on society. Also, in Ontario in order to get professionally licensed as an engineer (which is required before you can call yourself an engineer, legally) one has t…

Can you give an example of an ethical problem that might be faced by a software engineer, that is covered by these courses, and that these courses would enable a person to deal with significantly better.

I took that ethics course. I don't think that course really made much of a difference in anyone's career. The material was mostly common sense ethical questions.

Re: Show HN: A histogram of salaries given to H1B workers in the software industry

#219

Post by ild »

cesarbs wrote: post #189
ild wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many, many Indians come in on L1/B1/tourism visa and work completely illegally.Or may be politely asked to return a bit of money on coming back to India.

L1 is a work visa for company transfers.

Right. But there is no requirements for wage, nor caps; so it is technically legal, but should not be.

Re: Show HN: A histogram of salaries given to H1B workers in the software industry

#220

Post by TheCoelacanth »

tjl wrote: post #149
awesome_work_ wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are in the US, yes.

It depends on where you are in the US. In some states, it's against the law to call yourself an engineer without being licensed. From what I could find with a quick Google search it looks like California is one. But it relies on reporting, so if no one reports it to the licensing board, you're unlikely to be fined.

> From what I could find with a quick Google search it looks like California is one.

Could you provide a source for that? I know that California regulates the title "Professional Engineer" or providing "engineering services" but I'm not aware of any regulation preventing someone from using engineer in job titles.

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